Ep. 16. Dave Hyde; Author of Still Perfect: The Untold Story of the 1972 Miami Dolphins

Welcome! And thank you for joining us today on the Heroes and Icons podcast. I am your host, Greg Randolph. Please find me on the X at @GregHeroesIcons, aka Heroes and Icons podcast, to get updates for great shows like this and others. I’m also a featured podcaster on Houston City Beat.com We are Storytellers of Houston (houstoncitybeat.com) , @houstoncitybeat, which is a cool website for happenings and local businesses in the Houston area, so please check them out as well.  Also, if you’re enjoying the show- please share it with a friend. Thank you in advance for doing that. 

 We have a very special guest today. If you are a sports fan, especially of any happenings in the last almost forty years in the South Florida market, this gentleman needs no introduction. He has been a columnist for the Sun Sentinel since 1990 and in 2016 was named the National Headliner Award columnist of the year. He has written a few sports books, two of which we will discuss a bit today, and they are; Still Perfect, the Untold Story of the 1972 Miami Dolphins; and Perfection, with 1972 Dolphins Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Griese.  @MiamiDolphins

 My guest today is author and Sun Sentinel sports columnist, Dave Hyde @davehydesports. He has authored the following books: Still Perfect: The Untold Story of the 1972 Miami Dolphins; Perfection- with Bob Griese. The Inside Story of the 1972 Miam i Dolphins Perfect Season; and, Swagger- with Jimmy Johnson. Super Bowls, Brass Balls, and Footballs- a Memoir. All three can be purchased on Amazon- see the links below. 

https://a.co/d/fwWZblR

https://a.co/d/iBDXnY0

https://a.co/d/dSWj8nB

We also discuss the behind-the-scenes stories of that amazing Perfect Season from 1972, the work that went into it, and the great players, coaches and owners whose hard work made it all happen.

You can also find this podcast anywhere you listen, but primarily here:

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#podcast #football #miamidolphins #miamidolphins1972 #larrycsonka #perfectseason

Transcript

  Welcome and thank you for joining us today on the heroes and icons podcast. I'm your host greg randolph Please find me on the x at greg heroes icons also known as the heroes and icons podcast to get updates for great shows like this and others I'm, also a featured podcaster on houstoncitybeat. com.

That's a cool website for local happenings in Businesses here in the houston area. So please check them out, too If you're enjoying the show, please share it with a friend and thank you so much for doing that We have a very special guest today. If you're a sports fan, especially of any happenings in the last almost 40 years in the South Florida market, this gentleman needs no introduction.

He has been a columnist for the Sun Sentinel since 1990 and in 2016 was named the National Headliner Award Columnist of the Year. He has written a few sports books, two of which we will discuss a bit today, and they are Still Perfect, The Untold Story of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and Perfection with 1972 Dolphins Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Greasy.

My guest today is author and Sun Sentinel sports columnist Dave Hyde. It's a great honor to have you on the show with me today, sir. How are you doing, Dave, and what's keeping you busy?  I'm doing great. What's keeping me busy? A lot happening in South Florida. I was just at the Marlins practice today.

They're about to start baseball, , always writing about the Dolphins, , all year round and the Heat and the Panthers are charging up for the playoff. So, , it's a busy sports scene right here. And fortunately, the Dolphins are the one team. that has the most attention and the least playoff wins to show for it of late.

So let's go back in time to 72 when they were winning big.  Let me start off. I want to ask you a couple, of small questions about a couple other teams. In 1997, the Florida Marlins won the World Series.  What did that do  for the area and in the city?

And then how important was  that Craig Council, the chicken runs at midnight, how important was that to the whole, year? Yeah, well, it was a crazy run because , really up till that  time we had the heat starting to  Pat Riley just come to town a couple years earlier and the Panthers in 97 also made a run to the Stanley Cup finals and all of a sudden we weren't just a Football exclusive town where, you know, the Dolphins had the trademark on sports and South Florida.

The Hurricanes had their moments to, , all of a sudden we're blind. In fact, they had a charity dinner. I remember that year, 97 after the Marlins run, and they had the four coaches there and they were Pat Riley. . Jim Leland was the Marlin's manager of the, I get, I get the Marlis World Series mixed up.

 So Jim Leland, Doug McClain took his, his Panthers to the Stanley Cup finals, and then Jimmy Johnson was with , the Dolphins at the time and. You look at those guys and it looked like a Mount Rushmore of who's great coaching in that moment. And, and really three of 'em are Hall of Famers, um, Johnson, uh, pat Riley and, and, uh, and Jim Leland.

, but that Marlin's run was,  it was rare because up until a couple years before that, a few years before that, there wasn't any baseball in town. So it was, it was a lot of fun.  Oh, good deal. . And then,  with the Panthers coming in around that time or within a few years here or there, , what was that like to have a, a hockey team come into a southern state , where hockey didn't previously exist too much? 

Yeah, it was, it was an education for a lot of people. I grew up playing hockey, but  in south florida, there were, I remember that, during that Stanley cup run, there were questions like, how much does a puck weigh? And people were guessing Two pounds and, , I mean, things that the no way the puck could move that quick.

You know, so there was a whole education process. How do they switch lines? And, but like anything else, the surprise is always the best story of sports. And you didn't have to be a hockey fan in 97  to understand.  Nobody thought the Panthers were any good at the start of the year. And all of a sudden  they're making a run through the playoffs.

So they're in the Stanley cup finals and everybody loves a winner. , so everybody hopped on board and that was a lot of fun. That was probably the most fun covering a team I had just because of the players involved and the Surprise the shock of it all  so let's jump into the into the dolphins now  as we mentioned in the intro you've authored two amazing books regarding the  undefeated 1972 miami dolphins, there's  still perfect.

 The untold story You  Of that team and then perfection with Bob Greasy. How did it? How did those two masterpieces come about?  Did the team come to you? was it your idea  to write did dick anderson or somebody from that team come to you or?

How did how did that all unfold?  Yeah, no, so I've been, uh, I came here in 85 and worked for the Herald for five years, and then I was a columnist, uh, and, and in that time, you can't help but hear about the 72 Dolphins, and I'd done stories on these guys, and these were amazing personalities. I'm thinking as a writer, you know, you look, not only characters, but they're full of stories, And, and they're, it's at the right time in their lives where they'll tell you all their stories.

Okay. You know, , they're far enough away from their playing careers and they have such good stories to tell that I thought,  you know, I looked and no one had done a book on 'em. And now here we are. We're going to be 30 years removed from it. And I thought I want to do a book on these guys.

So I started,  I just went down a list, started calling one of them and interviewing them and met with Mercury Morris at a restaurant in South Miami and Bob Kuchenberg at the Hotel in Hollywood. And, , talk to guys on the phone for a couple hours and everybody was, great with their time. I went up to , Cairo, Georgia and saw Bill Stanfield and , and they're paying the cost of playing football, like Bill Stanfield,  he'd have, , a can of soda on his desk and it'd be half full.

And that's all I could drink because he couldn't tilt his neck any further back has fused this from playing football. So , all these guys, but they all had incredible stories, , to tell about that season and that team. And, , I just saw it as a writer. I thought, boy, this would be a great thing.

put together. And uh, you was all for once when I t agreed to write the  forwa um, so it made a, you kno 

Column material for years and years, including the one guy who wouldn't talk for the story was Jake Scott,  and  so I told our editors, look, this guy lives in Hawaii. And in fact, I asked Jim Mandich, he was good friends with Jake. Hey, can you set me up with an interview? I can't get him. And he said.

Howard Cosell,  the New York Times. He went through all these guys who come to me through the years trying to get, he won't talk. So I told my editor,  Hey, uh, if we ever get any extra money, send me to Hawaii and I'll try to find Jake Scott. And he goes, Oh yeah, send you to Hawaii. Sure. Well, about three years later, my editor, Brian White, he had to change.

He became a sports editor and he said, Hey, We're going to send you to Hawaii to find Jake Scott and I,, found his address and I drove in there and, , some guy was , in the driveway getting in an SUV. And I said, Jake, cause I didn't know what he looked like exactly. And, , he goes, no, Jake's up in the house.

So I went knocked on the door. Here came Jake Scott through the door. And, uh, he goes, I don't want a story done on me. Don't want a story. And we talked for a few minutes. He goes, I tell you, he goes, I tell you what, meet me at, that the this bar in Hanalei Hawaii at five o'clock and I walked in there and there he is sitting at the bar and if you ever watch the movie The Descendants with George Clooney,  Bo Bridges is sitting in the seat Jake sat every day at five o'clock and the two people on either side of him are the people Jake sat with every day at five o'clock.

I walked out of that bar at 2 30 in the morning  with a story. So, uh, he was great. Jake was great what was he like though? , he was such a legend with,  I don't know  if he told you any stories about his days at Georgia, where , he rode his motorcycle on top of the gym and, , the , confrontations with coaches  and all those things, but what was he like and what was , His relationship with Coach Shula. 

Oh, well,  a lot to unpack there. He was a,  , what was he like?  Well, for me, he was great. He was phenomenal. Sat down next to him,  ordered a beer. He ordered a salty dog  vodka drink, and we just sat and talked about living in Hawaii and his life. And, but you know, he.  He's to tell you who he is.

He's the one guy  he can't, he was  in the Canadian league  and there's a story of that. And you mentioned Georgia,  Vince Dooley promises players they get to pick which whole game to go to. If they want a certain game, they won the game. And they elected Jake to walk into his room with a bushel of oranges to say we want to go to the orange bowl.

And Vince told him too late, I already picked the sugar bowl.  And  when Vince Dooley lied to the team like that, Jake cut him off in his life. He left Georgia, after his junior year went to Canadian league to play football. So very, he's very principled and very cut and dried.

Either he likes you or he doesn't like you and, and, uh, but to tell also what he was when he came down to the dolphins  he's the one guy. Veterans stayed away from like all the other first timers the rookies. They had sang, you know, the hazy singer fight song nobody suggested Jake do that because nobody wanted to hear the repercussions, so He's a fascinating guy and a phenomenal guy to write a write a story about , I'm glad  that you got to do that.

And i'm also glad That he and chula were able to make amends he and Shula had a falling out just like he and Vince Dooley did, but they met up at a card show,  I want to say, in, , 2010, 11, 12, something like that years after, and it was inside the team.

It was such a talking point that they didn't get along and hadn't talked to each other in decades. That when they did make out when Jake went over and shook his hand, you know, guys got out phones and we're taking pictures  and they're sending them out and, uh, so you know, , he was a dynamic inside the team.

So very interesting.  For me , at the very top of the mountain  as far as tough guys go.  The story  where  there was a guy in the bar, maybe in Colorado that, that challenged him.

And he said, what are the rules? And then he knocks him back down the stairs.  Yeah, they're walking up, they're walking up the stairs and Jake says, what are the rules? And the guy says, no rules. And he turns around and bam, pounds on the guy, goes tumbling down. Yeah. He got in a lot of fights too. Yeah. I'm sure he won all of them. 

From what everybody says he did.  I bet, great story. So  what were some things about writing the book once you started to write it,  that maybe surprised you a bit , in your research, or maybe there was something that you were surprised to learn about the team  that you hadn't known. 

Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of surprises because, well, I knew, for instance, uh, Monty Clark, the offensive line coach, I, I knew Monty Clark, but I didn't know his story and what he brought to the team. And he just retired as a player. And Don Shuley interviews him over the phone, come to Miami. Now they had no offensive linemen.

Oh, they had Larry little, they had Larry little.  But that was, and Norm Evans, but  it was a terrible offensive line. In fact, when Shula met Bob Greasy, he said,  you know, Hey, I want you to stay in the pocket. And, and Greasy's response was build me a pocket and I'll stay in it. Because Greasy had a reputation as a scrambling quarterback his first couple of years.

, so Monty Clark comes in and, , he finds Wayne Moore., the 49ers were trying to keep him on their practice court. He gets Jim Langer off the Browns waiver wire. Um, and all of a sudden, they, Bob Kuchenberg  came in. He played semi pro football in Chicago the year before. And he picked the Dolphins because he saw how bad the line was and he thought, I can make that team.

And,  so all of a sudden they got the clay of the makings of a good line. , but Monty Clark was fascinating because he believed in visualization. , and he'd have players walk through, talk through their blocking.  And close their eyes and vision. And this was at a time when,  such ideas were out there a little, , and  some people didn't think it happened.

In fact, the veteran Senator, Bob DeMarco wanted nothing to do with this stuff. Um, but when you asked me what, what surprised me, it's, it's the stories that went into making this great team that I didn't know about. And the personalities, Monty Clark was a fascinating part of it.  Interesting I know there are

 just a plethora of stories  that we could  certainly talk about but but again that falls under the Ken Burns documentary  part, but the early 70s  was a different time. There was a lot going on there, Vietnam protests.

They had everything else and  Shula Changed  the rooming lineups  when the team went on the road  what was your sense  of what it was like for the team to play in that particular era?  Well, I mean,  Larry Little grew up in Miami  and  when he went to the Orange Bowl, he went to an all black high school.

In fact, a lot of these guys like Larry Little  there's probably  a dozen guys on both sides of the ball.  Larry Little, Never played against a white player until the pros.  Okay, but here's the fascinating story about  the racial mix as I'm thinking about it. Verndon Herter grew up in a small town in Iowa, farming town, , he wanted to be a farmer.

 And he was roomed with multi more, who is a black defensive player  Verden. Her's a white farmer from Iowa. Baltimore is a black defensive lineman who worked on highways. He was part of the highway crew.  And a high school coach saw him playing basketball  after he was working on a crew one day and he saw his feet working against,  he was a football kid.

Hey, do you ever play football? That's how he got into football. And all of a sudden  this Iowa farm guy and this guy who grew up in the black part of the South were roommates.   And neither had been around the other race at all in their lives. And they talk about, okay, they didn't become best friends, but for the first time they'd come.

One was one, one, I think burned in herbs, a ninth round pick and molding more might've been undrafted, but either way, neither of them in 1970, when they came in, we're sure to make the team, but for the first time in their life, they saw someone of the other race doing the exact same things. Same world with the exact, exact same hopes. 

And the exact same, , aspirations to make a career. And they both made the team  , and even at that Super Bowl,  they asked each other, what are you going to do with the winning money? And, Verden Herder talked about a cow he was going to buy.

 And Moldy Moore talked about this house. He wanted this air conditioned house. And I talked to him years later when I was doing the book and both of them, they've talked about this since, but both of them at the time were thinking, why would they want a cow? What's that? Well, , it was a stud cow to start , a ranch.

Okay.  And Vernon and I was thinking, why would he want, what's so big about an air conditioned house? Well, where Morty Moore grew up, nobody had air conditioned. It was a sign that you made it. Okay, I have an air conditioned house. So,  the outside world came in with all the, uh, like the Democratic National Convention was in Miami Beach with the riots and everything, when the dolphins were starting training camp, but, but really it was more interpersonal relationships of the time that,  the big,, riots or whatever affecting them.

,  But it was really interesting to do the book and hear their stories.  What an interesting,  time in history for sure., one part , of the book , that fascinated , one element was  in 1971,  there were a couple of sports psychology professors from San Jose State.

Tutko and Ogilvie, and  they approached NFL teams with a 190 question exam called the athletic motivational inventory and was also known as the instrument. And , the Dolphins , were off the charts , for their motivation. And Shula was off the charts in a lot of areas and was unusually driven.

, how important was this  for Shula , In assessing  and motivating the team to that point. Well, it's interesting because again Shula is ahead of his time in that department because I talked to those I remember talking to the professor uh, I think it was bruce ogilvy and they had lost the results and everything but He went to some teams didn't want to do it coaches said no, that's you know, that's not our Cup of tea.

They went to school and explain what  they want to do. And they realized Shula  agreed to it because he saw there's some information he could get from it too, that, okay, I can see where this team is on the stacks up and different things. And that would help me,  you know, how to coach it. How do they do, how do they respond to motivation?

, and so that tells you how forward thinking Shula was at the time. , and  his one.  Proviso to doing the test was only he would the players were given numbers and only he knew what number match to the players so that there wasn't any repercussions of names getting out and test scores  or anything.

But again, you talk about unusually driven. Another thing that  is almost lost in time is in  1970 when, when Shula came to the Dolphins.  He'd lost to, he'd lost, just lost the, uh, Superbowl with the Colts to Joe Namath Jets. He had lost a  tight NFL title game years before when they were big favorites in Baltimore to Cleveland. 

Um,  and then he also had this rivalry with Vince Lombardi. That dated back to Shula's time as defensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions and Vince Lombardi having the hammer of, , the great line and great running game against it. And so, ,  Shula came in with all these. ,  Motivations really, but losses that fueled him.

He, he went in that 72 Super Bowl. People were saying he couldn't win the big one. In fact,   Carol Rosenblum. Um, his former owner of Baltimore's went on to make national headlines.

He can't win the big one. And so the amount of pressure on Shula, we look now like all the all time winning his coach. He was always great. He was always great. He wasn't and this was a turning point in his career. Not only he won the big one, but he put a lot of ghosts to rest and didn't do it. So  

 Another very charismatic figure, , in the 72 team and , the franchise , is Joe Robbie. And if  there's no Joe Robbie, , there's no Miami Dolphins. So,   after Shula was brought in, Shula changed the organization's culture with the winning edge and everything.

But , what was the team's relationship  to Joe Robbie, especially  where Shula was concerned.  Well,  surely would hire people, but he'd say, or allow people  from the dolphins organization, a couple of guys, um, come in and watch practice and everything with the understanding you can't go tell Joe or anything. 

Okay. So the business offices were at Biscayne Boulevard  in Miami and, , the football offices were north and it was like that there was a split, , it's unfortunate that it couldn't. Uh, like you said, if the Dolphins didn't, if Joe Robbie didn't come around and  he, and, and he built the dolphins and bought 'em really on a shell game, as, , Al Davis when he was the a FL Commissioner said It's a shell game.

What they got going, he mortgaged his house. He put everything he had into buying the dolphins,  and with a limited partner and Danny Thomas, and it was the ultimate rags to riches American dream. However, you want to phrase it.   But he was a unique personality and him and Shula didn't get along  and  so that played out in that a lot of the team was for Shula.

He was their coach. , Joe, like a lot of owners at the time, wasn't really happy to spend money on the player, too much money on the players.  But, uh, unique personality too.  Was Robbie,?  I don't want to say, , Jealous, but that might be the right word.

, was there , any jealousy or resentment on his part towards Shula , for getting the credit , for the 72 team or, or any of those goals   He built this team from nothing, right? He hired Shula, he, and  it's easy to understood through the filter of Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson and Dallas, you know, they were a,  the next generation of Joe Robbie and, and, uh,  Shula.

, Jerry said to Jimmy at one point, I want some of the fun, you know, he wanted to be some of the claim, you know, you can go outside a second string right guard and people go, Oh, Jimmy Johnson's great. And, but you know, I make a 10 million business deal. Nobody says anything. So, and it was as big with Joe Robbie, Joe Robbie just wanted to be appreciated for what he did, which was build a team out of nothing. 

And in uh, six years, they went from an expansion team to un the only undefeated team in, in NFL history. Well, sure. Don Shula and, and, and, uh, Joe Thomas, who's the general manager. Yeah, were big pieces of that, but so is Joe, Robbie. And Joe. Joe. Joe just wanted a little bit of the fun, you know, , that's all he wanted. 

, in reading the book, he was really tough to kind of, to kind of peg because, you know, the second that you thought that he was, that he was this way, like maybe he was really hard on the contract with, with Stanfield, he would turn around and give Babb a three year guaranteed deal.

And so , he was tough to figure out a little bit. Yeah. And, and Shulis would say,  I thought it was a big victory for us when I got  someone to clean our offices. Twice a week instead of once a week,  and yet when Shula went to him and said,  you know, he wanted to sign our own moral for, you know, what was a hundred thousand, it was a big song, um, he'd be behind, I think only greasy on the roster for, for pay, um, And he, and she'll explain, you know, we need this emergency in case something would happen to Bob and he goes, let's do it.

So, so he understood where to spend money, but at the same time, I remember, Mike wrath at the PR guy person for the dog wrote a bio on  Joe Robbie and talked about the amount of money he gave to, , charities.   And it came back from Joe who had to approve it from scratch. Don't do that. And he goes, , but that's the essence of good PR for you.

That'll help people understand. He goes, I want them to think I'm the meanest son of a bitch in town. When I go into contracts negotiations. So that, that was him.  , the ownership, to me, one of the big untold stories in, in the book , was the backstory , on some local businessmen coming , to the rescue to save, um, gentleman named, uh, Bud Keeland from relocating the team , to Seattle.

I thought that was a very big part of the picture too, that, that's maybe lost in the whole story. Yeah, and  it's weird because you, I mean, I didn't know any of this till I started getting into it and realize that Joe had brought all these minority partners in because again, he didn't have money.

Again, he was mortgaging his house as part of the, everything he had was in the dolphins. But he needed money. And all of a sudden, , some of these minority partners saying they were getting enough money. The, like I said, the AFL realized there was a shell game going on and they don't have all this money they say they have.

And lo and behold, uh,  um, Geland was going to take it to Seattle  and  All of a sudden, a couple of Miami guys got a call, Miami,  Miami, Miami guys, old time Miami, and with money, and they weren't football fans, but they were Miami fans. They understood the value of having an AFL  team at the time in town, and they backed Joe, and they put money behind them, and that allowed the team to stay in.

But, uh, yeah, it was touch and go here for a while that the dolphins, maybe they would have been the Seattle dolphins.  Gosh, that's,  that's a crazy thing to entertain. But fortunately for us , that didn't happen and, you know, , history worked out.  So,  it's pretty obvious to that, that Zonka was one of the,  or the driving force on that team.

, he goes after his rookie year, he goes and talks , to Joe Thomas, the general manager and, , insist that he trade, or get Larry Little in a trade from San Diego and, , he was an agent of sorts  for his teammates after he and Kick and Moorfield signed with the WFL.

, and just a great teammate  and really quick to deflect any type of credit that he might have gotten , to anyone else. But , was there anything that you,  that was intriguing about Zonka , that wasn't told over the years? Anything that stood out to you? Yeah, he was a larger than life character.

I mean, look what he did after football. In fact, a lot of these guys after football, they sort of define who they were. Larry went to Alaska and did a, a nature show for years there. In fact, he had to be pulled out of the sea of Alaska. When his boat was sinking, and he wrote the guy who pulled him out, he wrote on it, thanks for pulling my ass out of, , the water or whatever. 

So, ,  he was a complete character and  he came to define the dolphins. You know, he got the. Unnecessary roughing penalty when he punched, he's running with the ball and he punches a Buffalo, but  to Shula,  it was very important that that Larry stepped up and Larry had concussion problems at the start of his career  question.

And really, Jim kick was the better back for the first couple of years of their career. And then, uh, Shula comes in and he gets this great line and Shula now, thinking back and Shula how Shula's thinking went, he'd just been beaten up by Vince Lombardi with Jim Taylor and Paul Hornig. Now he had the hammer, he had Larry Zonkin, and he's gonna pound, and he has this great offensive line.

Kuchenberg, I thought, had the defining  statement of that team. He goes, We were the perfect match in that we would get Larry the first two yards  and he would get up steam and he would get the next three yards, you know, and, and we would go first and third. First and 10 to second and five, you know, or, or whatever, but they had this machine and, and, uh, it was a perfect time in football to have a player like that.

And, and the perfect team because, um,  you know, they had Paul Warfield too, but he was almost, he was underused and, and greasy too.  He went from the scrambling quarterback to the thinking man's quarterback. Um, and all of a Well, you can't, you can't really pass. Well,  when Zonka left. In 76, he led the league and I think touchdowns or quarterback rating one of the, one of the big quarterback stats.

So, um, a lot of the Warfields and Greasy's minimize their talents on some level because they understood they had this worse and Zonkin this, this great running game.  . So, , another thing that, that kind of stuck out to me was that, was that Don Shula was, was actually number three on, on the list to, to replace, uh, George Wilson in, uh, in 1970 because they,  The team had talked to Eric Perseguin of Notre Dame and then, and then Bear Bryant, but was it, was it apparent to everyone once, once Shula came in and started instituting, you know, his way of doing things that he was, he was just ultimately the right coach for this team? 

Well, I remember Nick Bonacani talking about how  How  good going on an airplane on a way games, just as a, for instance, it was like a flying cocktail party. He called it,  you know, and because there was no discipline,  you know, there were parties of, uh, Joe Robbie bringing, um, potential investors to the team.

They'd be partying and the drinks would start flowing. And, and when Shula came, none of that, all that cut out, it was a business trip where, and so the.  And, and, uh, Monica, Connie would say he would get defensive, the game plan, and it'd be pages and pages thick.  And he'd say, what am I going to do with this?

Use this toilet paper, you know, and  now all of a sudden Shula came in and Bill Arnsbarger,  and they, they ran a very simple, every, every Sunday, they would, he said, me and Bill and, and true, we'd sit and pick out the five or six defenses we were going to use mostly that day. And it'd be very simple and it'd be effective against the defense, but you didn't have to know 25 different defenses.

And so, um,  and, and then the intensity of Shul LeBron was something off the charts. Nobody had seen anything like that before, you know, four practices a day his first year. Um, and,  and  I remember Bandage saying that at the edge of the spurt of the 72 Super Bowl,  They were sitting there that Super Bowl weekend.

He thought  they were talking about what a madman show how intense and he go and manage goes. Oh my God. Can you imagine what it would be like if we lose this game? What he'll be like next year.  So, so, uh, yeah, he was off the charts what a lot of the players had seen before.  Yeah, he was just, um, you know, obsessed with, with being obsessed about, about getting to that  and proving everyone wrong, that he, he could in fact, you know, win and be great and do it at the highest level.

 Let me ask you too , about someone else and I, I don't think this guy has talked about really enough on, as far as , the team and constructing the team. And that's the general manager, Joe Thomas. , how critical to, to the team , was Thomas with the trades and then with, with drafting all the hall of famers that, that he did even before Shula got there.

Yeah, I mean, you look what he,  here's the name that's really lost in time, unfortunately, um, because you go through the list. He got  Larry little for a high school teammate of his in Miami, Macklay, I'm a cornerback who didn't last, um, a trade with San Diego. He got Nick Monte Connie for a steel from, uh, the Patriots.

Um, he drafted Bob greasy. Now he had drafted Rick Norton.  66, but he said, I'm going to keep taking quarterbacks till I get one. And he took greasy the next year. And, uh, Becky, it was came down to Greece here, Steve Spurrier. And, uh, he went up to Spurrier. He went up to Gainesville and, and, uh, sat in the office of. 

Was Spurrier and his lawyer and Spurrier is playing. I think he's playing solitaire the whole time and he goes, okay, I can't handle that. And, uh, so other reasons to, of course, but, you know, he took greasy, um, you go down the list of steals. He got Jake Scott in, uh, for a 7th round pick a flyer because he was, he was in Canada playing in Canada.

And, uh, he asked Bill Stanfield, who was his. His, uh, friend from Georgia, a good friend,  whether he come and go, yeah, I think he'd come. So he took him as a flyer. 7th round pick. There's a guy who, uh, you know, Dick Anderson, 3rd round. You go through those drafts that he, he got at the trades he made, um, right down to Paul Warfield, uh, being sort of the anchoring piece of the definitive home run.

, piece they didn't have before but they needed somebody like Shula to come in and organize it all and to point this team towards winning. And so it's almost a perfect match. Shula comes in. He's got all these guys who want to win, but don't know how. And aren't just in a discipline system. I mean, the previous coaching staff would go have martini lunches.

Uh, and Bonnie Connie would talk when they come back with alcohol in their breath. And so here comes truly exact opposite of all that football  to a point nobody has seen before. And, um, so it was a perfect match of time and place. Joe Thomas. had set up these guys with great talent and then Shula comes in and harnesses that talent and, and, and sees the talent in some cases. 

 You know, , another amazing thing about this team  is that literally , every player made a contribution of, of some kind.  , there're guys that were, , on the bottom of the roster. , you know, Henry Stuckey suited up for Super Bowl vii.

You had a guy named Billy Ridge.  Who came, who filled in for sip for a couple games. Charlie Baab made. Yeah. Charlie B the Rookie. So yeah it's like, as with any great season, you get great contributions from people you didn't expect. , the biggest one, of course, oral Morrow comes into the game.

Mm-Hmm. When, when into the season when, uh, greasy goes down fifth game.  And carries on and, uh, um, all the players were scared because they'd seen her old practice.  Is he throwing ducks to the he throw a bad ball and he go dag nab it and uh, you know and so like who's this old man coming in, you know, but  they put a rocking chair in his at his locker, but  yeah, he comes in and like you said they got Unlikely contributions from all across the roster, which when you have a great season, that's what happens  , is moral the most unsung player on the team or is it maybe, I mean, maybe there's a Marlon Briscoe or someone else , that I'm missing, but it seems like it, it might be moral or maybe even, uh, even Warfield, somebody like that. 

Yeah. Let's see. I've sung players on that team.  You know, uh,  I'm probably not a good one to ask. I mean, the whole offensive line to me was,  you know, Manny Fernandez, it might be an unsung hero, . He had 17 tackles of the Superbowl, 17 for a defensive tackle to have 17 tackles, and he wasn't the MVP of the game. 

Jake Scott was because the story I talked to Dick Schaap. He was, he fell asleep during the game. He'd been out partying the night before and he wasn't really paying attention. He looked at the set seat and saw Jake Scott had two interceptions and said, Oh, he must be the MVP. So he made him the MVP. And, but Manny Fernandez, if you're maybe unsung heroes, it might be him for angry. 

A defensive line and, uh,  another guy that Joe Thomas found. He was, uh,  Joe Robbie didn't allow players to be undrafted players to be signed from west of the Mississippi because it would cost too much money to bring them in. But he made an exception for Manny Fernandez, with the idea being that Manny was, uh, Hispanic descent coming into Miami, it'd be a selling point.

Well, Manny was not Cuban, he was Mexican, and he didn't speak any Spanish. So Oh,  man. , let me  ask you this, , with Nick Bonacani's Hall of Fame speech, where he says, , you're not looking at the face of Nick Bonacani, you're looking , at the bust of the 1972 no name defense, , is he , the  Hall of Fame representative   for the defense, or is there,  someone else on the team that might, that.

Should be, that's not,  you know, a lot of these guys had hall of fame stretch of six, seven years. Dick Anderson on 40, he would have been right there. He's a defensive player of the year. Um, we had big moments and big games. Um,  and  he goes to the pro bowl in, uh,  77, I believe. And he gets hit, clipped and ACLs torn.

And at a time when eight people don't come back from ACL. So he would have been, if he had just could have played a few more years, he would have been a sure candidate for the hall of fame. Um, but a lot of these guys like Jake Scott, I think he made four or five Pro Bowls. Um, but they had a great Manny Fernandez, a great five years, great six years.

Um,  but to be in the Hall of Fame, you got to, you know, unless you're Gale Sayers or something, you really need a decade or something like that. And they didn't have a great decade. So, um,  Nick, Nick did. I think he would, he played 13 years, I believe. Yeah. And he was, he was, uh,  in the AFL. He was in the Boston Patriots Hall of Fame.

He's in the Dolphins ring of honor. He had all the, all the numbers, all the accolades.  And, you know, he had everything but great size, you know, he was Zach Thomas of his era, you know, a great defensive player, middle linebacker. Um,  and, you know, you know,  all these guys were fortunate to play with each other too, because all of a sudden,  if they had these career in other places, maybe they could have gotten a notice.

All of a sudden, they're on a perfect team. Team goes to the Super Bowl three straight years and their stars rise too.  . What do you think about Kuchenberg? As far as that discussion goes, that was all in favor Cooper. Of course, I'm a homer for these guys, but Kuchenberg,  you know, he's, he,  he played all, he was all pro guard many times that Shula need them.

They didn't have a tackle one year in 78.  Hey, can you play here? I'll play. He's all pro at tackle. Um, he  there's stats like, uh, nobody has played  I I can't recreate it off the top of my head, but the the fact is nobody's played more consecutive years And made more pro bowls and isn't in the hall of fame um, then kuchenberg and so Yeah, you know, I think it just came to the Point was, how many guys from that team can we put in the Super Bowl or in the Hall of Fame?

And he was, you know, like a musical chair. He's the odd man left out.  Um, I'd say that seems rather unfair. I mean, it seems like if someone's  deserving,  so he's being penalized for what his team accomplished, 

so  that's, uh, that's pretty crazy to me. But maybe maybe that happens one day.  And he's a great, I would have loved to have heard his Hall of Fame speech because he was a nut. He was a, you know, his father was a human cannibal. And they told him you can either be a human cannibal or find something else. He found football. 

I tell you what, that's a, I don't want to say a regret that I have with him.  But I really, I really wish that I'd had the wherewithal to start this, you know, at least five years ago and talk to,  a Bob Kuchenberg or a Jim Mandich,  , these guys that we've lost, , too soon,  but, um, Some of them are still around.

You can still catch them. You can still catch some of them. But yeah, there's, I think, uh, Is it 16 or 17? I'm not sure the exact number when they had the reunion a year ago. Uh, or was it two years ago now? Um, that,  yeah, I went to the dinner and, uh,  it was really interesting. The speech is given and a toast made to the guys who weren't there anymore, of which Hula, of course, was one of them. 

, what a great thing.  How did, we just got a few more things here and then we'll, we'll call it a night if that's okay. , how did the Dolphins help galvanize the, the, the city of, of Miami as, as coming in and being a, being a big thing? And then, you know, Howard Kendig even mentioned to me that, that as the team kept winning, the, the crime rate went down because the, the criminal element would be more focused on  On the team winning and not, you know, other nefarious things. 

Okay. I didn't know that. I'm not disputing them. That's interesting. Uh, but, but, but yeah, I remember Miami  in the early seventies wasn't the Miami anything close to the Miami. It was, it was a fun and sun city. It was, uh, uh, wasn't a whole lot to do here. There was no sports team at the University of Miami, but it wasn't winning them.

And so in 66, when Joe Robbie brings the dolphins, a lot of people around the country said, why, why are they going to Miami? You know, and you look at it from today's picture and you see. Oh, look how it changed. But the dolphins  became the definition of South Florida to the nation and certainly to the nation sports scene, because we're nothing was there before.

Now, all of a sudden they got a dynastic team. So, um, there were a lot of, uh,  you know, but it was a different time. The players would, uh,  Park outside the orange bowl on the grass and then they'd have a tailgate after the game and fans would come over and talk with them and have a beer with them. And that's sort of the. 

The time that it was in Miami, you know, it was a lot smaller things were on a human scale and television hadn't quite hit It was starting to hit Um, but it hadn't quite changed all sports like it soon did .  It was right there, but they helped  build  that foundation for sure , you know  the nfl network aired Special in the last year or two on the 72 team and it was filmed at coach shula's home office and You know zonka it goes and he pulls the files  and shula had gone out  to la to  chart the sun and where the sun was going to be at certain times of the day But He also had almost a  diarrhea They the players was uh, zehanka little and morris and greasy, I think and maybe i'm missing somebody but they remarked that that don shula of I mean the toughest of tough guys Had had almost a diary type of of entry Did  that type of thing or him, writing a letter of  encouragement to to garo   after the  past snafu in Super Bowl seven.

Did did those surprise you at all?  Well, it's interesting. Shula kept diary every year. That was his thing. Every year, every practice, he'd write down. Here's what we did here. And he was very meticulous. He was a you talk to his assistants. They talk these I forget what kind of notebook it was, but it's the same notebook every year.

And that way you'd have an index of, oh, here's where we were last year at this time. And here's, here's what I was doing or, or so he was a great note taker.  And, um, he kept all those and a lot of them are in the pro football Hall of Fame right now. Some are still in, uh, at his house here, but they gave a lot of them to the pro football Hall of Fame.

, as far as the, the letter to Garrow. 

Here's what happened there. Okay. Um,  so Garrow and Shula were  playing golf and a charity thing at the end. These side at the end, they're signing autographs and someone yells out, Hey, coach, you're the, you're the greatest. And Garrow says he's the greatest. He, he sent me the most important letter of my life. 

And he starts and Shula's looking at him like, and they start talking. And what happened was, uh, so Garrow is the clown prince of the Superbowl, right? He throws a touchdown to Washington and he comes home. He's a laughingstock and he closed himself in this house for, for a couple of weeks. He won't come out and, uh, he's depressed and everything.

He gets this letter  from John Shula that says,  I just want to remind you how important you were to our success. You know, we're expecting great things from you. Don't let a little adversity take away from what blah, blah, blah.  Letter of encouragement. And then brought Garrow out of his funk. He came out, he found a way to laugh at it.

And he ended up making, A business out of that to the point that other players on the team grumbled about him  Making that he's that made all that he was scared of cowardly playing He's making a lot of money, but gara laughed at him. So but anyways back to the letter  They talked shula and garo talked that day after the golf car and they realized shula didn't write the letter Dorothy shula wrote the letter.

Yeah As she would as she would for him at times  That's uh  Um  It's surprising, but but but also also not very surprising at all. I would imagine gosh,  Let me ask you about about bob. Greasy here for for just a minute because you you worked with him on a on a separate book but   He was a , very interesting and a dynamic player too on this team with his play calling everything else and especially , in the Minnesota game, you know, he called that they, they thought it was, he switched them up with passing wrong because they played him in the preseason.

And then he, he called that tight end delay to bandage. It was just a great play, but what was, what was Bob like to work with on, on, on that book?  Bob was great because  You know, he,  his mind, he said he was great at math equations and he saw football  as a math equation. He'd take the film home and he'd look for clues to break it.

And then also he could he'd see he'd catch things that team was doing. And break it down and he looked for keys and it was an equation to him to crack and so You know, you know he he would come and we talked about we've hit a couple times a perfect time of place of people meeting And it was the same with bob because here's this very smart  Very, uh, talented quarterback.

Um, and all of a sudden  Monty Clark brings with him and Shula,  uh, puts in the, this check with me system, which is you call two plays at the,  in the huddle and it check with me, depending on  to simplify it, if he called an odd and odd or even number first, that would tell you what play they're going to run.

,  And all of a sudden this,   you alluded to the tests of this team underwent very smart players on the team, off the charts, um, very smart offensive line, very smart quarterback. You're taking advantage of something that, uh, the NFL really hadn't seen the advancement of the check. B system that the 72 golfers did.

In fact, one of the games they played against Mike Curtis of, uh, Uh, Baltimore,  he came to the sideline and he said, I know they're doing something to change the play, but I just can't figure out what they're doing. You know, cause this is something that hadn't reached the full NFL yet. So anyways, for Bob, it was a perfect system in that  it relied on his smarts to read the defense, which he could do and run the right play, which he could do, and he was so humble.

As far as his own stats, he, as he, as he proved in the 73 Super Bowl, I think he threw seven times and completed six. And, and so he didn't need that. He wanted to win. And so it was a perfect match in that regard too.   In writing that that book with him and everything? Do you  feel as if he and I I feel this way But I kind of feel like he got a bad rap  as being listed as you know what aloof or You know or too reserved and being too focused on his on his family and not going out  and being a partier But more more concerned  About being home  for his wife and kids and then but but shula trusted him though He trusted him with the film and he was going to do his work Anyway, but  did he get an unfair rapid in that regard?

I don't think so. I think that's who he was. I mean Yeah, yeah and not in a  not in a bad way, but he was aloof  He was reserved. Um, I think Larry cycles that he doesn't remember, and they lived in the same apartment complex for a while that  not trading many. I can't remember the exact quote, but there wasn't a lot of give and take, but, uh,  You know, the team trusted Bob, they understood they could win with Bob and, and Bob didn't need to be everybody's best friends, but he was a huge family man, he'd go home, um, he didn't like going out,  you know, with the other players and that's just who he was.

And, and, you know, teams made up all sorts of different personalities and here, their leader, their quarterback was his own man in his own way too.  . Well, we've,  covered a whole lot here.  Let me ask you just a couple more things and , we'll get on with, other stuff today.

, it seems like with, you know, in, in the last couple of years with the, you know, the recent celebration of the 50th anniversary of the team, uh, defeating Washington, um, that there's even more respect for this team , was the media reluctant over the years to  give them the credit that, that they deserved somehow?

I Because of their of their schedule or this thing or that Yeah, I don't know what it was, but, um,  you know, I, I know Shula certainly felt they didn't get their job deserved when, uh, you know, uh, they ran a computer contest, uh, Steve Sable did it at NFL films and, and the Dolphins lost to the, 78 Steelers or something like that.

He called him up and reamed him out. Oh, we didn't lose the game. How can your computer have us lose? So, um, but I do think there's a measure of. over time  and  other teams challenging the record, you know, that  people come to appreciate the dolphins, the 72 dolphins and or  at times grown tired of them too, because, oh, there's Mercury Morris on TV again, talking about the 72 dolphins.

But what,  when people say,  Oh,  they're clinging to this, clinging to this achievement cause that's their life.  What these guys did beyond football is amazing. State senators and doctors , Nick Bonacani was CEO of two fortune 500 companies. And then he started the Miami project when his son Mark, uh, got paralyzed.

Um, you go down the list of what these guys accomplished in business. Um, And it's, it, it backs up what they did, who they were on the football field. No, absolutely. They're all all great men and all very, very successful., after Super Bowl seven ended, the team wins. Um, I think it was Carl Tassoff, one of the assistant coaches put, uh, put greatest ever on the blackboard in the locker room , is that the legacy of this team? 

I mean, without question , whenever he'd asked you, he'd say, well, how do you define who's the best in sports? He goes scoreboard. Okay. Okay.  And he'd leave it at that meeting. Nobody beat us on the scoreboard. You know, no one, we were 17 to know, and until somebody else matches that, that,  um,  you know, that's as good as anything,  you know, in their mind, it is a debate.

Who's the greatest ever. And I'd say it's certainly it. Uh,  It's hard to come up with a better way to define it than a team that didn't lose.  , I couldn't agree more. And let me tell you, thank you very much for me personally, for you writing this book and bringing these stories to life, , because otherwise , I never would have heard them.

And I got, I got a great deal of personal enjoyment , from all of your work and the book. So thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks. It was, you know, that writing that book was a lot of fun. Like I said, getting to know those guys, um, all the stories they had, there were characters on that team. And, uh, so that, that was a lot of fun.

It was the first book I did too. And, and, uh, so it was like a labor of love.  Are you, are you working on any, any projects now? Any books forthcoming?  I'm doing a couple of fiction books, but I'm  trying to figure out which one to do and get traction on them. But I just did a, I finished a book last year with Jimmy Johnson is a swagger  book about his career.

Um, and I'm trying to figure out where to go now. , I'll tell you what I'm going to put links to, , all of those books. On the show notes for the podcast So the listeners can  go and buy those and I I highly recommend All of these books, especially if you're a dolphins fan nfl fan fan of pop culture Um this the 1972 Book is I i'll i'll put up against it in any of them.

It's it's really It's really a great read, just all the way through. I appreciate it, yeah. Thanks, Greg. It was a lot of fun to do, so it's been a lot of fun talking with you. No, likewise. Thank you, thank you so much.  I can't thank you enough for spending some time with me today. And if I there's , any other way that I can,, support , your books or  your projects, let me know.

I'd be happy to do it.  I appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for having me. No, no. Well, thank you. And I'm glad we , got it worked out. Well, all right, everyone. Thank you for listening to the Heroes and Icons podcast,  with your host Greg Randolph. And once more, thank you so much to our guest, Dave Hyde.

And again, you can find the links to his books in the show notes for this podcast. Thank you again, everyone for listening.  Have a great night. God bless.